cage and he sings. There's only one thing I'm sure about,
and that is I have no desire to go home."

"Why should you want to go home? What's there to attract you?" said
the mother pensively. "It's empty, there's no fire burning, and it's
chilly all over."

Vyesovshchikov sat silent, his eyes screwed up. Taking a box of
cigarettes from his pocket he leisurely lit one of them, and looking at
the gray curl of smoke dissolve before him he grinned like a big, surly
dog.

"Yes, I guess it's cold. And the floor is filled with frozen
cockroaches, and even the mice are frozen, too, I suppose. Pelagueya
Nilovna, will you let me sleep here to-night, please?" he asked
hoarsely without looking at her.

"Why, of course, Nikolay! You needn't even ask it!" the mother quickly
replied. She felt embarrassed and ill at ease in Nikolay's presence,
and did not know what to speak to him about. But he himself went on to
talk in a strangely broken voice.

"We live in a time when children are ashamed of their own parents."

"What!" exclaimed the mother, starting.

He glanced up at her and closed his eyes. His pockmarked face looked
like that of a blind man.

"I say that children have to be ashamed of their parents," he repeated,
sighing aloud. "Now, don't you be afraid. It's not meant for you.
Pavel will never be ashamed of you. But I am ashamed of my father, and
shall never enter his house again. I have no father, no home! They
have put me under the surveillance of the police, else I'd go to
Siberia. I think a man who won't spare himself could do a great deal
in Siberia. I would free convicts there and arrange for their escape."

The mother understood, with her ready feelings, what agony this man
must be undergoing, but his pain awoke no sympathetic response in her.

"Well, of course, if that's the case, then it's better for you to go,"
she said, in order not to offend him by silence.

Andrey came in from the kitchen, and said, smiling:

"Well, are you sermonizing, eh?"

The mother rose and walked away, saying:

"I'm going to get something to eat."

Vyesovshchikov looked at the Little Russian fixedly and suddenly
declared:

"I think that some people ought to be killed off!"

"Oho! And pray what for?" asked the Little Russian calmly.

"So they cease to be."

"Ahem! And have you the right to make corpses out of living people?"

"Yes, I have."

"Where did you get it from?"

"The people themselves gav